The Boys Next Door (19 page)

I didn’t have a concussion, and they didn’t shave my head or anything traumatic like that. After the first prick of anesthetic, my head didn’t even hurt much. Which was a good thing, because McGillicuddy went to buy himself some Pop-Tarts out of the snack machine. I lay there by myself on the hospital bed and stared at the water-stained ceiling while the doc stitched me up, scolded me, and left to find me some pain pills for when the anesthetic wore off. I felt very sorry for myself and very alone until Dad showed up, with Frances.

Dad grasped my hand in both of his. “Lori. Oh, my Lori.” He started to cry softly.

“Dad, I’m okay.” I patted his arm: there there.

“Trevor,” said Frances. Her hand was on Dad’s back. “Deep breaths.”

Dad sniffed a deep breath through his nose while Frances held his gaze and moved her hands in circles in the air in front of her, encouraging him to breathe therapeutically. The way they were acting, people at the hospital who didn’t know them might mistake them for a couple. A very odd couple, with Frances in her tie-dyed hippie costume and Dad in his lawyer costume from the office.

“Here,” I said, easing off the bed. “Lie down, Dad.”

He switched places with me, never loosening his grip on my hand. “I don’t want you to be scared because of this.”

“She won’t,” Frances said.

“I won’t,” I said.

“I want you out there wakeboarding again tomorrow,” he sobbed.

“I can’t, Dad. The doc said I’m not supposed to go swimming until my stitches come out in a few days.”

“Then I want you wakeboarding the day they come out. And do exactly what you were doing when you got hurt.”

I thought about this. “It would be difficult to replicate.”

“Do you understand me?” he said, still crying.

“Shhh,” Frances said, patting his shoulder.

“Yeah, Dad,” I said, looking toward McGillicuddy in the doorway. He munched his Pop-Tart. I twirled my finger beside my ear:
crazy
. McGillicuddy nodded. At least I wasn’t the
only
sane person around here.

A nurse brought me some pills, which I took gladly because I didn’t want my brain to hurt like that again, ever. They weren’t supposed to be strong enough to put me to sleep, but they did. Or it was the medicine combined with the adrenaline draining away. The fatigue from nearly drowning, touching bryozoa, being sobbed over by a couple of he-men, etc. I’d had such a busy day.

All I knew for sure was that I stretched out on the backseat of Dad’s car and slept on the way home. When we got there, I wasn’t moving. They prodded me, but I could
not
see myself climbing the stairs to my room. I did
not
see why they couldn’t let me sleep in the car parked in the garage. The backseat felt delicious.

McGillicuddy carried me up the stairs, and Dad tucked me into bed. Ahhhhhhh, bed had never been such a relief. Dad and McGillicuddy spoke softly in the doorway.

Dad: “She didn’t even wake up. You be sure and come get her if there’s a fire.”

McGillicuddy: “A fire. Right, Dad.”

I laughed myself back to sleep. A fire. Really! In the last twenty-four hours, I’d been through everything bad I could imagine. What else could possibly happen?

“Lori, when we’re old enough, I want you to be my girlfriend.” Sean kissed me. With his mouth still on my mouth, he pulled me off the bow seat and down into the floorboard of the boat, out of the wind.

I broke the kiss to say, “I guess this means we’re old enou—”

He cut me off by kissing me. His tongue circled deep inside my mouth, and I opened for more. When I got bored with this (the idea of getting bored with making out still caused me to laugh, ho ho), I lifted my chin so he could kiss my neck. Then I turned my head so he could kiss my ear. Wow, this was the best dream ever, and so
long
! Suddenly anxious, I peered into the back of the boat to see whether the other boys were watching us. The boat was empty.

“Who’s driving?” I gasped.

“You are,” Sean said.

“Oh.” This made me a little nervous, but not nervous enough to wake up or anything. I turned my head so he could kiss my other ear.

“Listen,” he breathed. “What’s that?”

“The boat motor,” I murmured without thinking. “And Nickelback.”

He propped himself up on his forearms and cocked his head to hear better. “Actually, I think it’s JoJo.” The skull and crossbones dangled above my eyes.

“Adam!” I cried, sitting bolt upright in my bed. I peered over at the clock blaring “Too Little, Too Late.” No wonder the dream had lasted so long! My alarm had gone off, but I’d slept right through fifteen minutes of radio. The photo of my mother lay flat on the bedside table. McGillicuddy must have knocked it over by accident last night when he put me in bed.

“Stupid subconscious!” I slapped myself in the back of the head. “Ow!” The shock of the slap rippled through my brain and into the gash on my forehead. I cupped my hand over the stitches.

A soft knock sounded at the door. McGillicuddy leaned in without waiting for an answer. He glanced at the clock, then at me. “Breakfast is being served to the psych ward in the dining hall. You want me to send up an orderly to help you get out of bed?”

I stuck out my tongue at him. I didn’t mind psych ward jokes from McGillicuddy. He was the only one who understood. Except—

“Adam came to see you.”

I took in a sharp breath. “When?”

“Last night, and again this morning.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I wailed.

“Because any other time in the history of your life, you would have snuck in my room and rearranged my sock drawer in revenge for waking you up. You know I need the argyles in the front.”

“Well, what’d he say?”

McGillicuddy gathered a year’s worth of wakeboarding mags and his copy of
The Right Stuff
and stacked them neatly on the floor so he could sit on the edge of my bed. “Last night he was just checking on you. This morning he came over to say he’s taking the day off work. But he wanted you to know, he’s through.”

“He’s through? With what?” With Sean? Fighting with Sean?

“With you.”

Of course he was through with me. He’d told me as much while I bled in his lap yesterday. As long as I heard it with my own ears, I could hope I’d misread the whole situation. Hearing it from McGillicuddy made it real. Almost. “Are you making this up?”

“No. He’s really mad at you. I’ve never seen him this mad. Not even at Sean.” McGillicuddy thumbed through
The Right Stuff
to make sure I hadn’t gotten marshmallow on it. “But I want you to know some good will come out of your crash. It’s inspired me to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“Remove your own appendix?”

“Ask Tammy out.”

My head hurt. “Tammy? Why?”

“I think she’s been coming to the Vaders’ parties to see me. I know, I know, this seems as impossible to me as it does to you, but I really think she likes me.”

I grunted a little with the increasing pain in my head. I didn’t want to tell him this, but it might save him some humiliation later. “McGillicuddy, you’re wrong. She’s been coming to the Vaders’ parties to see
me
. We’re friends.”

He squinted at me. “Why do you think so?”

“She told me so.”

“Couldn’t it be one of those schemes, like you and Adam are pulling on Sean? She’s pretending to be your friend so she can see me without admitting that’s why she’s at the party.”

“Tammy wouldn’t do that to me,” I said. My pulse began to race, and my head throbbed harder with every heartbeat. “What do you mean, one of those schemes like Adam and I are pulling on Sean?”

“I figure if you can brain yourself on a pontoon boat just to get a boy to ask you out, I can ask a girl out and brave a little rejection.”

Now I winced against the throbbing in my head. “Adam told you I crashed just to get Sean to ask me out?”

“Yeah. He told me you’ve faked going out from the beginning. He’s
really mad
about you crashing.” McGillicuddy leaned across the bed and nabbed his copy of
The Hunt for Red October
, which I’d been telling him since last summer I did
not
borrow, when in actuality I had lost it under some (clean!) laundry and didn’t come across it until last week. “Adam and Sean have always fought,” McGillicuddy said, tucking the book under his arm for safekeeping. “But you’ve made it a million times worse. Can you imagine the five of us wakeboarding together for the rest of the summer?”

“No,” I admitted. It sounded about as fun as getting a tooth pulled every afternoon. “But I didn’t start this in the first place. Sean did. Sean stole Rachel from Adam.”

“Adam never liked Rachel anyway,” McGillicuddy said. “He was madder about the insult than the girl. He was in love with you. If it hadn’t been for you wanting to fool Sean, Adam would have simmered down eventually and let Sean have Rachel. We’d be back to normal by now.”

“Reverse, please,” I said. “Adam was in love with—”

“You. Where did I go wrong? I raised a little brother, not a femme fatale.”

I didn’t quite get it. Could Adam have been telling me the truth about his plot? It seemed too good to be true, and too awful if I had screwed this up. “Did Adam
say
he’s in love with me?”

“
Was
in love with you. Yes, that’s what he said. How the hell else would I know? I wish I didn’t. This place is getting to be like that awful girls’ reality show, what’s it called? The chicks in my dorm call dibs on the TV in the rec center and won’t let us watch basketball.”

“Is it on MTV?”

“Yes!”

“Get out of my room.”

As he stood, I made a weak grab for
The Hunt for Red October
, but he dodged me. He closed the door behind him.

Adam was in love with me. He wasn’t just saying it to keep me with him while he made Sean jealous. He was in love with me.

Head throbbing, I looked around my room, which still reflected the boy I’d been before I started transforming myself. I hadn’t gotten around to a room makeover with purple flowers and a fuzzy pink ottoman. As the air-conditioning clicked on, the fighter jet models I’d built from kits swayed at the end of their strings near the ceiling. I was a little brother. I was a mess.

Adam had been in love with me, just like this.

And now he wasn’t.

It was a good thing Advil took care of my headache. If I’d had to stay out of work and spend the day at home, I would have driven myself insane (if I wasn’t already). As it was, I showered faster than usual to make up for lost time, taking care to keep my stitches out of the spray. I ate breakfast as usual, except Dad gave me a big hug and sobbed a little into my hair. As usual, McGillicuddy and I opened the door to hike across our yard and the Vaders’ to the marina—

—and there stood Sean with his finger on the doorbell. He asked me brightly, “Will you go to the party tonight with me?”

My brain said,
Hooray! I’m going out with Sean! My time has come!

My body was strangely quiet. There was no happy skin. My brain reached down through my nerve endings to poke at my heart and make sure it was okay. My heart said,
Eh
. At this point I realized I
did
need to go back to the shrink. I sagged against the doorjamb, rolled my eyes, and uttered something very unladylike.

McGillicuddy stepped around me and wagged his cell phone between his fingers. With a pointed look at Sean, he told me, “Call me if you need me.”

“I could take you,” Sean shouted after McGillicuddy. “Bring it on.” His voice echoed around the garage. Then he turned back to me and sighed, “I was afraid you’d say that. Look, I told my dad we’d come to work a little late this morning because we’re going to fish your wakeboard out of the lake. Let’s talk.”

I followed him down to my pier, where he’d tied the wakeboarding boat. Clearly it
did
occur to him to dock in a certain place to save
someone
a long walk. Himself. Just not me. We stepped in, and I looked around on the floor. “Who cleaned the blood out of the boat for me? I was going to do it this morning.”

“Adam,” Sean said. “When we get to the pontoon boat, you’ve got to tell me this story. He was saying it was his fault and crying the whole time. Pussy.” He slapped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I almost forgot you weren’t a guy.” Before I could offer a choice response, he cranked the motor and the Nickelback.

As we zoomed toward the pontoon boat, I noticed that a dump truck had mistakenly unloaded a pile of soot onto the side of the bridge. The closer we got, the more clearly I could see it wasn’t a pile of soot after all but carefully applied spray paint marking out the letters AOAN LOVES LOKI. Adam had been busy. He must have gone out in the motorboat in the near-dark last night, or the near-dark this morning. He wanted to get the offensive words off the bridge as quickly as he could. They would have haunted him until he got rid of them. He hated me that much.

“Junior!” Sean stood in front of me, clapping his hands. “McGillicuddy Part Deux!” He’d stopped the boat next to the pontoon boat. “McGillicuddy left your wakeboard floating here, so let’s check under the pontoon boat first.” He handed me one of the oars that motorboats carry in case their engines stop when they run over logs. As we poked around under the pontoons, he asked, “Why’s Adam so pissed at you?”